Thanks DarkGruson after encoding the extras I found there was another 400mb spare so I re-encoded the film's video to a higher bitrate, 7900kbps avg, 8800 max.
I just ordered 10 DL discs and 50 SL discs, I chose printable even though I don't have a printer that'll do them so those who do can print the label themselves, plus I hate the brands logo splashed all over the face. The DL prices are almost reasonable when you get successful burns, but if they fail you end up with £2.40 DL coasters compared to 24p SL coasters.
OK...I'm a little confused about this transfer since I only have moderate knowledge about PAL, NTSC and transfers in general. If I were to dowload citizens transfer and put it onto DVD, will it play on an American DVD player? Would it be as if I was watching the PAL version, but on an NTSC player? Please cure me of this ignorance.
If you download the NTSC version, you'll get a version that plays fine on NTSC players. If you download the PAL version, you'll get a version that plays fine on PAL players. If you download the XviD version, you'll get a version for playing on your PC, I don't think those DivX capable DVD players will be able to play it.
If I understand it correctly, you're working with both the German and French LDs. With the huge amount of space available on the DL DVDs, have you ever thought about including the German and French audio as well as the English? It would be fantastic to have a truly multilingual DVD version at some point.
However it turns out, I'm looking forward to your PAL release, and thank you already in advance for all the effort put into it!
The thought of including the French & German audio did flash across my mind but was dashed just as soon as it appeared because of the amount of extra work involved with the subtitles (opening crawl, Greedo's translation and 2 new sets of menus which would be difficult as I don't speak anything except English and computers/internet ) I will be saving the original captured video (30gb) on a pile of blank DVDs, possiblity to do a multi-lingual version would be there but somehow I can't see myself doing it what with most people wanting the DVDs I'm making being able to read/speak English.
The blank DL discs arrived today, a bit too soon as I still haven't finished work on the menus/chapters, was feeling quite ill all day yesterday which meant I couldn't do much of anything but did do a little work on the menus.
edit: ah crap!, I've got to re-encode the main film video again to fit on the DL discs, DVD Identifier is reporting "Blank Disc Capacity: [4,174,842 Sectors = 8,152.0MB = 7.96GB (8.55GB)]" and I'm about 170mb over that limit. The quality won't be noticable from the current encode it's just the annoyance of waiting 7 hours for the multipass mpeg2 encoding.
segaflip & DarkGruson should be receiving my XviD ANH transfer very soon, my NTSC DL DVD of ANH is virtually complete apart from a couple of minor menu additions, so if all goes well over the weekend I'll have the first burned copy on Monday (then I get to do the menu crap all over again for the PAL version... not difficult, just tedious)
Doctor M, ready to bin your 'wheel rebuild' of Moth3r's ANH yet?
In the process of putting the Definitive Collection extras onto the DVD I learnt a couple of new video processing tricks, the one I used for the trailers was that you can cut up a piece of footage into two parts, encode the first as interlaced, the 2nd half do 3:2 pulldown removal then encode as progressive then use pulldown.exe to add the 3:2 pulldown flags, then join the two m2v files together and you have a 'hybrid' NTSC mpeg file that when played on an NTSC tv you get interlaced footage that changes to 3:2 pulldown footage, whilst on a PC with a software player you get interlaced footage that changes to progressive footage. The other was an easy way of extracting out the slideshow images from captured footage and rebuilding them into a new video clip.
BTW, all this time I've been working on the NTSC DL DVD I've had a no-frills PAL SL DVD I made month ago I've been watching far too much.
Before I make a potential £2.40 coaster I used DVDshrink on my DL DVD compile and burnt it to a DVD-RW, DVDShrink had to squash the video by 50%, shrinking the video by half sure introduced compression artefacts that weren't there before, but otherwise it was a great test of the menus etc. Before I burnt any clips to test discs I've been using my Sigma Hollywood+ hardware mpeg decoder card to test full DVDs on my tv and parse the DD to my amp, very very useful to test menus etc. on a 'real' setup before burning anything but the only drawback is the picture quality is bad because of the composite connection, the RGB connection between my main DVD player & tv makes all the difference and that's where the video shines.
Anyhoo the NTSC DL ANH DVD is effectively done so all I got to do now is burn off the first DL disc and make the cover & disc artwork. Tomorrow I think.
Well it looks like everything is on hold again, I'm starting to feel like death, I caught the flu off my family so that's me out of action for the time being
*Citizen fires up his projector, puts his feet up and watches the new SG-1 & Atlantis episodes*
I've been impressed by your dedication to the OT preservation; it looks like you've produced one of the best transfers and you've certainly been working very hard. (You're trilogy will be out before I've finished ROTJ!)
In many ways your version will be superior to mine, however, here's a little constructive criticism:
(Left - Citizen, Right - Moth3r)
The left edge of this moon was the first thing I noticed when watching your XviD sample on a PC monitor. (The effect is more pronounced in the moving video than in a static image.) I would call it "edge tizziness" but I think that's an audio term. I don't know if this is caused by the multiple capture averaging, or if it's jitter or minor time base errors in the player.
Moth3r I know about that problem but there's nothing I can do about because it's not the fault of the capture device or any post processing, short of saving up and getting a different laserdisc player which I can't afford I'm stuck with what I got, remember I only have a Pioneer CLD-D515 and not one of the top end units.
edit: actually, this got me thinking, the 5x capture averaging helped reduce RF noise noticably so what if I were to get a different model laserdisc player, capture the video a few times and merge them into a file, then merge that file with the CLD-D515's merged footage... would that get to the level of smoothing out imperfections in the laserdisc player electronics or would the images not align properly...
Anyone got more than one laserdisc player and wants to try a test?
The 'tizziness' is actually some sort of inteference lines at 45degrees on the picture (bottom left to top right), the filters bring it out a lot more on the XviD version because of the higher resolution it's at and the higher resolution of monitors, however watching the DVD version on my 28" widescreen tv (no anamorphic->letterbox compression as with a 4:3 tv) through RGB connection it's difficult to spot the 'tizziness' is there, and if you're viewing it through a composite connection I think that would help mask it further. Which is why it hasn't bothered me enough to start saving up for another laserdisc player.
The only annoyance I'm having at the moment is the colour disappearing from the very top/bottom lines of the picture on the DVD, caused by the block compression of mpeg2 it means some of the blocks are compressing pure black right next to pixels of the film which means not enough colour information is being stored. Trying to work out if there's any way round it without resizing the footage to perfectly fit the mpeg compression blocks but that would mean an incorrect aspect ratio. Damn mpeg, hurry up HD and arrive everywhere in the world soon!
Top of the range PAL players like the D925 and 2950 actually go quite cheap on eBay, you could end up paying £60 - £80 for a player that cost £800 when new. As someone who has bought three copies of the trilogy on laserdisc to get the best possible hybrid transfer, I'm surprised you haven't considered upgrading your player. Are you married?
I bought 3 sets because the Definitive Collection is lacking some noticable detail compared to the PAL discs, going from the Definitive to the German set was a big upgrade in quality of source image, I don't think I'll get that level of clarity increase by buying another laserdisc player which is why I haven't thought about going down that route, what I have I'm happy with. I had to buy the French set because of the German titles and Greedo's burnt-in subtitles, patching the side breaks & intro crawl etc. with footage from the Definitive set would've stuck out like a sore thumb.
ALRIGHT! I got the xvid today looks great! I will be uploading the xvid to abs tonight or tomorrow, also will be sending a copy to DarkJedi and Rikter.
Great stuff, I wonder how many downloaders will have a go at converting it to DVD... (and not get the aspect ratio spot-on )
Plan A was to hope that this would burn to a DVD disc as data and play in my DIVX player. The sample file will not play in it, as was stated earlier in the thread so I assume that the full film will not either.
A new writer will have to be bought to do the DL versions so meanwhile, the big question is, how does one go about converting this to SL DVD format and get the aspect ratio spot-on.
A "Guide for Extremely Stupid People" would be appreciated.............
Thanks in advance.
By the way, the sample looks great on my PC monitor so I am even more looking forward to seeing the full thing.